THE POISON GARDEN website

Pontifications on Poison

Being some ramblings on events associated with poisonous plants.

Tuesday 18th October 2011

I’m a scientist. It’s not always easy to define what being a
scientist means or rather to define what particular things fit
an individual into the term ‘scientist’. I rely on the timetable
choices offered by my high school to all its 13-year old boys.
You could choose ‘arts’ (history, geography, English literature,
etc.) or you could chose ‘science’ (physics, chemistry, applied
mathematics, etc.)

By that definition, I’ve always thought of myself as a
scientist and I’ve held that up as a sign of logical thinking
and a closer desire for truth than is found with arty types who
are much more inclined to offer interpretations and tolerate
imprecise thinking. But, every now and then a scientist or group
of scientists does something that gets me tearing my hair out
and feeling tainted by the term.

Yesterday, an American company issued a press release saying
that the US government was going to pay them a fair sum of money
to continue development work on a product. I wasn’t able to find
out what ‘a fair sum of money’ actually was but it must have
been significant since the company’s share price rose over 35%.
It is a very small company so to the US Department of Homeland
Security the actual cash sum is, probably, no more than small
change.

The product being developed is a detection system to identify
ricin and other potentially harmful substances on a small scale.
The target market is small to medium companies who fear they
might receive unidentified powder through the post. I’ve
blogged, quite a few times, about the lack of potential of
ricin, the toxic component of
Ricinus communis, the castor oil plant, and you’ll find a
full list of those entries if you follow the link to the plant
page.

Ricin is never going to be a realistic terrorist weapon but
that does not mean that this company’s proposed product is
unnecessary. There is a real need for this product because the
US government has created it. By repeatedly over-stating the
potential for ricin to do harm, the US government has told every
disaffected former employee, every animal rights extremist,
every white supremacist, in short every ‘nutter’, how to cause
terror simply by finding some benign white powder and sending it
off in the post labelled ‘ricin’.

One day, the American people may wake up to the disservice
their government has done them by creating a true terror threat
where none previously existed.

But, back to the subject of science. The press release,
yesterday, called ricin ‘a chemical warfare agent’ and even
cited a reference to another published work just like a proper
science paper would. That reference (and I’m not linking to any
of these documents because I’m not here to spread nonsense
further) was to a paper, published in 2009, keep that date in
mind, in a proper scientific journal about the medical effects
of forcing mice to inhale ricin. I’m sure the paper itself
contained properly researched information though it went well
beyond my comprehension with its discussion of detailed medical
effects.

My concern with the document arises from the introduction.
The first sentence of the introduction sets out the supposed
position of ricin and includes the words ‘ricin has become a
tool of extremist groups’. At the end of the sentence, the
authors cite four references to previous publications. Most
scientific papers start this way by setting out, briefly, the
jumping off point for the present work and giving references to
previous scientific work that established what is being said in
the introduction.

Cynics sometimes say that authors try to pack this opening
sentence with lots of references to make the opening statement
seem irrefutable and, if it is not, the hope is that people will
be too anxious to get to the meat of the new work to bother
following up the references. But, I followed up these four
references that were given to justify ricin’s standing as this
substance of dread.

The first was to USA Today and the second to the New York
Times neither of which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal and
I find it immensely disappointing that the authors think quoting
a newspaper article is the proper way to add references.

The third was to the well-respected Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA). For some people, I’m sure, seeing a
citation to JAMA would be enough and they wouldn’t follow up to
see what the cited document was all about. Well, I did follow up
and the cited document was a ‘Special Communication’, rather
than a research paper, about Iraq’s interest in biological
weapons. It was published in 1997 and we knew rather more about
Iraq by 2009 than we did then so it seems odd to rely on such
out of date information.

Mind you, when you read the ‘Special Communication’ it turns
out not to support the notion of ricin as terrorist threat. The
seven page document contains only five references to ricin.
These include ‘Ricin might have been researched because it is
plentiful and known to be effective for assassination’ and ‘A
few 155-mm caliber artillery shells were filled with ricin for
field testing. Reportedly, tests did not go well and no further
attempts were made to develop artillery shells for biological
warfare’.

And the fourth reference is to another respected publication
the ‘British Medical Journal’ (BMJ). Here again the date is
important; 18th January 2003. This is in the ‘news roundup’
section and is titled ‘UK doctors warned after ricin poison
found in police raid’. It is a story about the ‘Wood Green ricin
plotters’ and, of course, by the time the plotters were
acquitted in 2005 it was known that there had been no ricin in
the flat in Wood Green. So, you have to ask, why would a
scientific paper published in 2009 cite a story that was known
to be false?

I really get quite angry at the way scientific principles are
abused by many of those involved with work on ricin but, on this
occasion, there was also something that greatly amused me.

At the same time as I came across the company press release,
I saw a post in George Smith’s excellent ‘Dick Destiny’ blog
about this matter. The first comment, posted soon
after the blog item appeared, begins ‘You have no idea what you
are talking about’ and continues in this vein. The second
comment is from George Smith and says ‘Next time try not posting
from an IP so close to the company in the story’. Tee hee.